cell phone use while driving

Toward the end of my professional career, I built a driving simulator at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and examined the phenomenon of Driver Distraction. With all the new gadgets being put into road vehicles these days (navigation systems, laptops, etc.), ESPECIALLY the use of cell phones, drivers seem to be spending less and less time attending to traffic and the road. I have some pictures of my research coming, as well as a trial brief I prepared for a trial inwhich the planitiff was suing a cell phone at the time of the accident. I will also be posting pictures and a video clip of a session that ABC News did in my lab which appeared on The Evening News with Peter Jennings, A Closer Look segment on May 2, 2001. John Yang was the news journalist who interviewed me.

Click on the image to the right to view an ABC News segment from my lab that aired on May 2, 2001. This WMV version is 20MB, so if you have a dial-up modem it will take a while to download.

As a result of my research on driver distration, I was called to testify as an expert witness shortly after I retired. The trial involved a 2-vehicle intersection crash that appeared to be the result of one driver talking on a cell phone at the time of the crash. As part of my work for that case, I prepared a report which summarized some research of others on the effects of talking on a cell phone while driveng. Here is an Adobe Acrobat pdf file of the non-propriatary part of that report.